


Stranger Still

by Wilusa



Category: Mysterious Ways
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-24
Updated: 2011-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wilusa/pseuds/Wilusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple's first night together prompts difficult questions. No explicit sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranger Still

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: With PAX no longer existing, I assume _Mysterious Ways_ and its characters are the property of the other owners I originally mentioned: Carl Binder and Peter O'Fallon, NBC, and Lions Gate Films. No copyright infringement is intended.

_**Note:**_ I wrote this long ago - lost interest in Mysterious Ways before the end of its run, and haven't really thought of it in years. But I'm still pleased with this one fic I wrote.

.

.

She woke with a smile on her lips.

And brushing against them, his hair. His soft, wavy hair...

She pulled away with a strangled gasp, and sat up in bed. Finding herself nude, she instinctively clutched the bedclothes to her bosom. But her companion, still half asleep, groped for her with an only mildly troubled "Mmm?"

So last night hadn't been a dream.

 _The first white man I've ever slept with. My God._

Of course, he was the first man of any color she'd slept with in a very long time. Since her husband's death.

 _This is wrong._ Trembling, she slipped out of bed and pulled on her robe. _Wrong, wrong!  
_  
When she turned to look at him again he was sitting up, regarding her quizzically. "Wh-what?"

"This is wrong," she said aloud. Not as firmly as she would have wished.

"No, it's not." He slid off the bed and padded over to her, showing no embarrassment at his own nakedness. "Can you honestly say you don't love me?"

"Th-that's not the point. We're not right for each other. You know that! We're too different...you belong with Miranda."

He gave her his best wounded-puppy look. "I'm not in love with Miranda. I never was."

She took a deep breath and tried again. "Can _you_ honestly say last night was good for you?"

"Didn't I act as if it was good for me? I've been waiting for you -" He broke off in confusion.

"What? All your life? Or -"

"Don't say it!"

After a long silence, he moaned. But then he met her eyes and said, slowly and distinctly, "All I know is that I want to be the person I am now. A man who loves you."

She was already shaking her head, even as she fought back tears. "Just look at us! Look at us, side by side in the mirror!"

She turned him, forcibly, to face it.

And then her heart stopped.

He must have felt her go rigid, because he clutched her and pulled her closer. "You see it," he breathed. "I know you're seeing what I am."

She couldn't speak. Could only stare at their reflections, at the tears streaming down her cheeks...and his.

"You see it," he repeated. "You see Joanna Kane and her husband Louis Kane. Not Warren Goldberg."

At last she found her voice. "Y-yes," she whispered. "But...there's no hope for us, no future. Even in the mirror, I see Joanna, age fifty-five, and Louis, age thirty-five."

She tore her gaze away from it. "And when I look directly at you -"

By now she saw only a blur.

But she made herself tell him, "When I look at you I see Warren Goldberg. _Age_ _twenty_."

.

The End

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 _ **Author's Afterword:**_ As I recall, the episode on which this was based was titled "Stranger in the Mirror." My intent in the story was, of course, to mislead the reader into thinking the characters were Peggy and Declan, then provide a surprise.


End file.
